Energy in Latin America: Production, Consumption, and Future Growth

the effects of pollution from sources ranging from motor vehicles to power plants,
refineries, and petrochemical plants.
20

Of all the Latin American countries, Mexico, which has suffered some of
the region's most serious deterioration of environmental quality, has perhaps been
the most aggressive in addressing the problems caused by pollution. In 1991, the
country shut down three highly polluting refineries with capacity totalling 164,000
b/d. It also imports MTBE to reduce the lead content and increase the quality of
gasoline. Brazil and Venezuela are planning to build their own MTBE capacity as
part of their overall refinery expansion programs. In August 1990, the state oil
companies of these two countries signed a mutual cooperation agreement to combat oil spills in Venezuelan and Brazilian territorial waters. Another indication
that the Latin American governments are making efforts to protect the environment is the projected increase of gas use in a number of countries. As regional
trade expands, gas will become the fastest-growing traded energy product in Latin
America by 2000.

In short, hydrocarbons policy has a tremendous impact on the development
of energy production and consumption. While the issues discussed above are shared
by many Latin American countries, each individual country in the region faces a
unique set of concerns in its energy sector development, because of the dissimilarity in size, energy resource endowments, and history of energy use. Depending on
their policy choices, Latin American countries will face different advantages or
constraints in achieving their individual development goals during the 1990s.

Unless otherwise specified, all of the Caribbean nations and territories, except Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Netherlands Antilles, are included in the
definition of Latin America in this book.

Geothermal power is installed only in three Latin American countries ( Mexico, Nicaragua, and El Salvador). It accounted for 0.12 percent of the region's total primary
energy production in 1991 and is included in the category of other energy.

Latin America is a net coal exporter only based on the heat content (in terms of
boe). In terms of absolute quantity of tonnage, Latin America imports more coal than it
exports. The difference is due to the heat content of Colombian coal (1 tonne is equivalent
to roughly 4.7 boe) and Brazil's imported coal (1 tonne is equivalent to approximately 3.9
boe). See the section on coal in this chapter for details.

Of the 4.4 billion tonnes of coal produced worldwide in 1991, 69 percent or 3
billion tonnes was hard coal and 21 percent or 1.4 billion tonnes was lignite and brown
coal. All of the coal produced in Latin America was hard coal. See British Petroleum ( 1992)
and OLADE ( 1993).

Print this page

While we understand printed pages are helpful to our users, this limitation is necessary
to help protect our publishers' copyrighted material and prevent its unlawful distribution.
We are sorry for any inconvenience.